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By every measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and extraordinary thing. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely imaginable situation for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly attracting a much larger and more diverse audience than usually showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You in some way got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music rather different to the standard indie band set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a huge fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his jumping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s view, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by cutting some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks often occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to add a some pep into what’s otherwise some unremarkable country-rock – not a genre one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His efforts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the fore. His popping, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an affable, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was always punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything more than a long succession of extremely profitable gigs – two fresh singles released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever magic had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to rediscover 18 years later – and Mani discreetly announced his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which additionally provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a aim to break the usual market limitations of alternative music and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of groove-based change: following their initial success, you suddenly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”